This paper explores Gen Z’s understanding of science and pseudoscience, assessing, at the same time, their media literacy skills. Drawing on the relevant literature and elaborating on the findings from five focus groups studies in remote areas...
This article analyzes how Hindu nationalists employ fantasy narratives to counteract resistance, with a particular focus on narratives of ‘motherhood’ and ‘pseudoscience’. It does so by first introducing a conceptual discussio...
This article outlines elements of a negative history of science. For historians wishing to get a fuller picture of scientific practice both internally and externally, there is a lot to be gained by considering the dialectical constitution of scientif...
17 November 2022
The popularity and spread of health-related pseudoscientific practices is a worldwide problem. Despite being counteracted by competent agents of our societies, their prevalence and spread continue to grow. Current research has focused on identifying...
Evidence-based medicine (EBM) supplies the best available data, yet clinicians still face low-value care, surrogate-driven reversals, and pseudoscientific claims. We propose Semi-Imperative Evidentialism (SIE), a normative framework that links eviden...
This study examines pseudoscientific beliefs among university students, focusing on gender and faculty differences at a private university in northeastern Mexico. Data were collected from 794 students (38% male, 62% female) across six academic discip...
Direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry testing is a new and growing industry that has gained widespread media coverage and public interest. Its scientific base is in the fields of population and evolutionary genetics and it has benefitted considerably f...
Sharks are among the most endangered nonhuman animals on the planet because of industrial fishing, the shark meat and fin trade, expanding recreational fishing, and other anthropogenic causes. White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias), the most visible i...
Human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause cervical cancer. Global viral eradication relies on specific criteria, including a single host species and effective vaccines, a feat successfully achieved with smallpox and rinderpest. Although measles is also a...
This paper reviews the beliefs which drive some agricultural sectors to consider the lunar influence as either a stress or a beneficial factor when it comes to organizing their tasks. To address the link between lunar phases and agriculture from a sc...
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has triggered an enormous stream of information. Parascientific digital communication has pursued different avenues, from mainstream media news to social networking, at times combined. Likewise, citizens have developed ne...
The field of neuroscience has seen significant growth and interest in recent decades. While neuroscience knowledge can benefit laypeople as well as professionals in many different areas, it may be particularly relevant for educators. With the right i...
The COVID-19 pandemic has given rise to all types of beliefs, theories, and explanations, whether scientific, religious, or conspiratorial. At the beginning of the pandemic, science did not yet have a medicinal product for this new disease, and alter...
Scientific misinformation refers to false, misleading, or inaccurate information that contradicts, ignores, or misrepresents established scientific evidence or consensus. It can stem from accidental misunderstanding or ignorance of facts, as well as...
Communicative misunderstandings, cultural misinterpretations, and tribal hatreds are not phenomena that emerge and develop only in the digital world. Within platforms, conflicts explode and circulate mainly in crisis situations, but the relationship...
Creationism is not only a pseudoscience present in Brazil but also a political problem. In reality, creationism as a pseudoscience and as a political issue are entangled in this Latin American country. Thus, this article has a double objective: to sh...
As Hamlet gazes into Yorick’s skull, he reassembles the quirks of the jester’s personhood and also imagines a self that he used to be, in relation to Yorick. Partially through the lens of Hamlet, characterized by A.C. Bradley as Shakespea...
Hindu civilizationism is more than a century old phenomenon that has been steadily gaining strength. Its recent amalgam with populism has made it ascendant, popular, and mainstream in India. This paper explores how Hindu civilizationism is not only a...
Integrated Information Theory (IIT) is one of the most prominent candidates for a theory of consciousness, although it has received much criticism for trying to live up to expectations. Based on the relevance of three issues generalized from the deve...
All too often, organizations embrace standards for health technology assessment that fail to meet those of normal science. A value assessment framework has been endorsed that is patently in the realm of pseudoscience. If a value assessment framework...
The Internet and social networks are full of nutrition information, offering people guidance to make healthy eating choices. These sources always present themselves as a gateway to reliable information on healthy eating; however, too often this is no...
The pseudoscience known as iridology makes the unsubstantiated claim that it can identify medical disorders by examining the iris, the colored portion of the eye. Iridology does not provide a reliable means of diagnosis, and there is no scientific pr...
The global trend toward self-medication has increased public reliance on over-the-counter treatments and health-related information, contributing to the spread of pseudoscientific claims in healthcare and posing serious public health risks. Pharmacis...
Economic disinformation causes significant harm, resulting in substantial losses for the global economy. Each year, it is estimated that around USD 78 billion is lost due to the spread of false or misleading information, with a major share stemming f...